Ever notice how frequently the word “addict” is used? Just do a Google News search on the word and you’ll be shocked just how often it’s used in a headline. Articles are plastered with mentions of drug addicts, sex addicts, gambling addicts, food addicts, shopping addicts, work addicts and internet addicts. “These people” are painted as out-of-control and often menaces to society who need to be stopped, jailed, medicated or otherwise cut off. But what if those diseased people weren’t sick at all? What if you suddenly realized you were one of them? Well, that’s what happened to me. In preparation for this podcast, I realized I’m an addict. I’m an addict who comes from other addicts, who has passed it onto my kids, too. I’m constantly looking for a way to not be with myself, a way to avoid the pain I have of not having meaningful bonds. In this chat with physician and best-selling author, Gabor Maté, we talk about the shocking truth about what causes addiction and the things we can do to address the problem. What’s cool about Gabor is that he avoids quick-fix thinking when he tackles things like addiction, ADHD, sickness and the human spirit overall. Rather, he shines lights on the often uncomfortable truths that live at the root of these things.

There are two kinds of people: those of us that are domesticated and those that feel strangely out of place. The ones that feel out of place, might not be able to communicate why, but know in their gut not only that our world is toxic but that the systems and traditions we’ve created don’t feel even close to natural. No matter which camp you fall in, both feel depressed, frustrated, anxious and flat-out unsatisfied as they get dragged through our culture’s unfriendly demands just to stay afloat. Have you ever asked yourself how and why we’ve sabotaged ourselves like this? Author and Psychologist Chris Ryan, has tackled big parts of the Matrix through his and his wife’s book, Sex at Dawn, his podcast Tangentially Speaking and his forthcoming book Civilized to Death.

At least once a week for almost 20 years, Sgt. Kevin Briggs would stand just a few feet away from a severely depressed person who had climbed over the rail in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge and was a step away from falling to their death. While they both stood there with noisy traffic and cold, strong wind creating insane vibrations, Kevin had to find a way to do whatever he could to break through and get people to decide to climb back. We all have moments of despair so I hope that, in this brief conversation with the man who’s become known as the “Guardian of the Golden Gate,” you can borrow from the powerful technique and messages that he used too help hundreds of people save themselves.

Hard to imagine someone better to talk growth with than the person who wrote "The Growth Mindset," world-renowned professor and best-selling author, Carol Dweck. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and she has appeared on Today and 20/20. I drove down to Stanford and met Carol in her office to chat about her 40 years of research and how it's been recently catapulted into the mainstream.

As a kid of immigrants, Christian Piccholini felt marginalized, abandoned by his working parents, and bullied. In fact, one day when he was cornered by a bully, he fought back and beat the guy down. He became respected by the other boys. Soon after, he was approached by an older charismatic father-figure kid who pulled him into the skinheads where he rose through the ranks over 7 years, ultimately using hate music to recruit other young boys to fight back against the imaginary invasion of “others.”

We might think of our culture as progressive, but I’d argue that shame of the human body has never been higher, in part thanks to a global culture forming around Facebook’s censoring of breastfeeding Moms, nudes in classic art, and pretty much anything that even resembles a nipple or even your kid, naked under a sprinkler. As we shovel more and more of this imagery from our consciousness we’re telling a dangerous story to the world.

Before this was an issue, there have been many decades of the religious right beating down what they see as inappropriate. Either literally or monetarily burning them at the stake. In the early 90s, this happened to this week’s guest, Jock Sturges, who had been shooting controversial fine art images of naturist adolescents and their families for decades. His studio was raided by the FBI and his photos and equipment was seized. While the grand jury declined to bring an indictment against him, and the French government flat out laughed at the charges and instead told the right that they were huge fans of his work, it was no less ruinous.